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There are two games:

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth (2004), which closely follows the movies.

The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II (2006), which shows battles and fights in other places (namely, the so-called War in the North and what happened to the Dwarves and Elves while the movies' events take place).

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The game provides examples of:

Action Girl: Éowyn in both games, Arwen and Galadriel in BFMEII. The Hero Editor of BFMEII allows to create one (Elvish Archer and Rohan Maid).

Adaptation Dye-Job: In the books, Glorfindel is stated to have blond hair (his name even means Golden-haired). In the game, his hair is silver-white.

Adaptation Expansion: Of the Peter Jackson films. BFMEII shows the battles of Dale and Mirkwood; and features Tom Bombadil as a hero summon. The expansion pack has Barrow-Wights as an Angmar reinforcement summon.

Adaptational Badass: In the original, Éowyn was in combat only once (but achieving more than most soldiers in middle earth, by killing the Witch-King). Here, once unlocked she can go to all the combats her heart cries for.

Arguably the premise of BFMEII can also be this, as it revolves around what happened in the north after Frodo and the Fellowship left Rivendell. Which was rarely if ever brought up in the movies themselves.

Annoying Arrows: Mostly averted. Elven archers with upgraded arrows can kill an enemy with one shot but may take two or three with normal arrows. Even enemies with upgraded armour can withstand, at most, two upgraded Elven arrows. Factions with weaker archer units deal less damage but still kill with no more than maybe five arrows. "Monster" units such as trolls, Mûmakil, Ents, etc. need many shots to kill due to their size and durability.

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Played straight with Hero units, due to the Heroes' high hitpoints and fast out-of-combat regeneration. Even in the Lord of the Rings Boromir was mortally wounded by one arrow, though he took three to the chest before he stopped fighting.

In BFME, skirmish and multiplayer modes have an imposed limit for the Good and Evil sides, the Evil one being twice the Good one.

During the campaigns of BFME, this limit is gradually increased when controling specific territories. The maximum is the same as the multiplayer / skirmish one.

In BFMEII, the limit is increased with specific buildings. Both sides have the same maximum limit. In the campaigns the maximum limit automatically increases from mission to mission.

Army of the Dead: The Trope Namer appears as both a summon by Aragorn and the good faction in the original, and Men of the West in the sequel. They take no real damage from most damage types in the game so they are almost unstoppable.

Arrows on Fire: Upgrade for most of the archers in BFME. In BFMEII, it is still the case for Human and Orc archers, but Elven ones upgrade their arrows with a kind of silver alloy and a magic spell.

Also applies to siege units, with most factions lighting their projectiles on fire, goblins and elves (who use creatures to throw them) not having an upgrade at all and Angmar freezing theirs instead.

Ascended Extra: The Angmar hero Hwaldar was mentioned in passing in the appendices. In the third game, he is a full-fledged hero with his own set of unique abilities and even a backstory.

Also applies to his boss Morgomir, who is one of the Nazgul. In the books, the only Nazgul to receive a name was Khamul.

Authority Equals Asskicking: All across the board, so much so that it's easier to list the exceptions. With the dwarfs, Gimili is a stronger fighter than their highest rank hero King Dain. In the Men of the West faction, Aragorn is the strongest melee fighter and has no official rank, his design being based on before he became king of Gondor.

Awesome, but Impractical: Grond, the huge battering ram used by Mordor during the Minas Tirith siege (BFME). It is huge, slow, very resistant, and very powerful. When the gate of the city is destroyed, Grond will stay there and block most of the path in and out of the city, providing a kind of unintentional useful device to the defenders. Grond can destroy only the door, it can not destroy the inner buildings, the walls, or even the annoying towers.

Heroes in skirmish mode can be this, it takes time to level them up and the cap they consume could have been used to build more units.

The Oliphants in the second game. They look big and intimidating, but their actual performance in game does not begin to justify their cost of 1600 resources and 100 population, until a Balance Buff improved them.

Prior to getting a Balance Buff, many of the higher end heroes like Gandalf and the Witch-King weren't worth using. They were powerful to be sure, but were so expensive they could only be gained late game, and the threat they posed means that any smart player would focus on the so they don't level up all the way. The Witch King in particular had suffered from a bug where the AOE for his attacks on foot would hit friendly units and enemy units, making it very hard to take advantage of his power as a melee fighter.

The Berserker: It is one of the Isengard units. One of Gimli skills is also described like this.

In both games, hero units keep their experience from mission to mission, as the player retains his general powers. Upgrades have to be researched in each mission.

In the BFME campaigns, the player keeps his units with their level, and their upgrades, but must research those upgrade first to apply them to units he just created.

In the BFMEII campaigns, the player keeps his heroes but not his army.

In the BFMEII "War of the Ring" mode, the player keeps the army he created during the turned-based mode, but not the troops created during the real-time battles.

Averted in the expansion, your armies that you build in real-time mode are now persistent.

Black Knight: Both games features Nazgûl on Fell Beasts (including the Witch-King of Angmar as a more powerful Nazgûl). BFME has Nazgûl on horses, the Mouth of Sauron, and Sauron himself (on foot).

Black Magic: The Angmar Sorceror unit is based on this; he's surrounded by a contingent of acolytes which he sacrifices to do things like make rotting corpses fall from the sky and suchlike.

Blown Across the Room: The Elves enchanted Silverthorn arrows strike like hammer-blows and can send an orc flying hilariously across the battlefield.

Bow and Sword, in Accord: Some heroes (Legolas, Lurtz, Faramir, etc) can switch between sword (or knives for Legolas) and bow. There are also the Gondor rangers, who use daggers when having to defend in melee fighting.

A valid strategy for Goblins in BFMEII is to mass produce cheap, basic Goblin warriors and attack by the hundreds.

Canon Foreigner: Several heroes of the evil factions: Gorkil and Drogoth for the goblins; Karsh and Rogash for Angmar.

The Cavalry: Several missions of the Good campaign of BFME consist of surviving until the reinforcements come. Most of them are literal examples, as The Cavalry is the Rohan army.

Cavalry of the Dead: Summoning them is the ultimate power of the Good general powers, and a level 10 skill of Aragorn. They also intervene during scripted events, led by Aragorn in both cases: the siege of Minas Tirith in BFME (both campaigns), and the siege of Rivendell in BFMEII (end of the Evil campaign). The dead are immune to most weapons or powers. The only ones who can really do damage to them are units with strong area-of-effect attacks such as Sauron, the Witch-king, the Balrog, and flying units like the Eagles and Fell Beasts.

Character Narrator: Saruman is both a playable hero and the narrator for the evil campaign.

Competitive Balance: The factions in the second game are more or less well balanced, but it is averted in the first game, imbalanced towards the good side without shame (and yet, that makes playing and winning with the evil one so much fun).

The good side has multiple options to heal: a ring power, heroes standing idle, Aragorn's first power, fountains in the bases, etc. Healing does not exist in the evil side, except for heroes and trolls that did not grab a tree.

Medium-sized good bases have a light wall that forced the evil to bottleneck at the entry. Big bases are full fortifications with huge walls, giant towers and doors that get closed, which can't be accessed without siege weapons. All evil bases have just minor towers and no walls, and it is possible for the good side to beat the whole game without making a single siege weapon.

The ring power allows the player to be at one point of the map, and deploy temporary forces somewhere else: elves, rohirim, eagles, ents, ghosts, etc. The evil side only has the balrog, which is the most expensive power and can only be used late in the game. Keep in mind that the good factions' are supposed to balanced by their units being stronger and more expensive than the evil factions, these powers counter what is supposed to be the good factions' main weakness.

Good side: loads and loads of heroes. Including Gandalf and Legolas, who can take whole armies on their own. Evil side: either Saruman or Lurtz for Isengard, none for Mordor (the Nazgul only shows up from time to time)

Cool vs. Awesome: The map editor allows players to come up with all sorts of crazy battle scenarios (Gandalf vs a fifty foot tall Sauron, for example), but there are a few to be found within the games themselves. The second game's final good mission, if you play it carefully, can feature Treebeard vs the Balrog (it is possible to have Treebeard win, but it requires very careful use of healing powers).

During the BFME Amon Hen mission of the Good campaign, there is a cutscene where Legolas is shown using a high level skill that will only be unlocked several missions later.

The Good campaign of BFMEII ends with Galadriel destroying Dol Guldur after summoning a storm

Damage Is Fire: Played straight in BFME (except for the Ents, which really suffer from constant damages when burning), partly averted in BFMEII (where fire attacks cause special damages to buildings).

Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The first game uses a right-click to activate powers; the second game uses a left-click. Why EA thought this change was necessary is anyone's guess.

David vs. Goliath: A player controlled example in the original game where you control Gandalf in his fight the Balrog. The Balrog is far too powerful for Gandalf to take on in melee, so the best option is to use one of Gandalf's spells to damage the Balrog, then run around until it recharges and use it again.

Death from Above: Eagles and Nazgûl mounting Fell Beasts in both games. BFMEII adds the dragon Drogoth for Goblins, the ability for the Mordor fortress to hurl a giant volcanic rock, and several general powers (burning sunrays, rain of arrows or burning rocks).

Defeat Means Playable: In the Evil campaign of BFME, the first imposed Mordor mission requires to conquest several Haradrim settlements, to hire them for the conquest of Middle-Earth, either by buying (with an expensive present) or destroying each of them.

In The Rise of the Witch-King, after you've defeated the black Númenoreans with your Troll army, they'll become your elite infantry units.

Doomed by Canon: Strangely averted in the Good campaign of BFME. First, the Moria mission ends with Gandalf slaying the Balrog without being separated from the Fellowship. A bonus objective of the Amon Hen mission requires to save Boromir's life. Later, Faramir is not gravely wounded in Osgiliath, Théoden does not die in front of Minas Tirith, and Éowyn is not gravely wounded near of him.

In the Appendicies of the Book King Dáin is noted as being killed during the siege of Erebor though in the game he can be revived easily.

In a strange case of both sides being Doomed by Canon both Angmar and Arnor are plainly not going to survive the events of the expansion, seeing as neither were around to help or hinder the forces of good in the books.

Any hero with the Terrible Fury skill qualifies, but special mention goes to the Fell Beasts. Expect terrified cries of "IT'S A NAZGUL!!!" from your troops whenever one shows up. And with good reason.

The orc mines and ladders in Helm's deep also cause scared screams when first deployed.

Dropped a Bridge on Him: Hwaldar stops appearing after the sixth mission of the Angmar campaign without any explanation. Granted that the next mission takes place decades later, it is likely that he died from old age.

Dungeon Crawling: The Moria and Shelob's lair mission of the BFME Good campaign, which both have a secondary objective consisting in finding all the treasures. Especially the Moria's one, which features only hero units.

Everybody Lives: In the good campaign of the first game, one of the last missions is the Battle of Minas Tirith. While the battle is a bloodbath in the films and the games, it's actually possible (though difficult) to play through the mission without loosing a single man. How? Have all your units retreat to the upper levels of the city and position them at the very top of both staircases, and build fountains and armories to fully arm and upgrade your soldiers. Build a hidden gate on the upper right part of the lower level, and then build nothing but towers on the remaining lower slots. Thus, whenever Mordor units break in, they'll be peppered with arrows non-stop, including the Nazgûl, and any who break through will be killed by your soldiers as they try to go up the stairs. When Rohan arrives, have them go through the hidden gate to the upper levels. When the army of the dead shows up, use them to kill all the Mordor units to win the mission.

There is another route to achieve it. Turns out that an entire army of Gondor Rangers, all upgraded with fire arrows and banners so that battalions automatically replenish lost soldiers, will carve through the forces of Darkness like a hot knife through butter. Even a Nazgul stops being a concern, since they're very weak against fire attacks. By the time the Rohirrim and the Army of the Dead show up, there's not much for them to do except clean-up, which rarely results in a single loss.

Evil Overlord: Sauron, and Saruman to a lesser extent. They appear in some specific missions of the campaign. Saruman is a normal hero unit for the Isengard faction, and Sauron can be built in BFMEII multiplayer / skirmish mode if certain condition is meet.

The Mouth of Sauron in BFMEII is a possible candidate as well, as he seems to be the master of Dol Guldur and is the main coordinator of Mordor's attacks in the North.

The Witch-King in the expansion to BFMEII, he can be used in all missions of the Rise of Angmar campaign and the ultimate goal of the Epilogue is to not quite kill him.

Game Mod: The game has had a massive reassurance in the modding community in the last few years, spawning several high quality mods, ranging from HD texture changers, to full on fanmade Expansion Pack, such as the famous Edain mod, and Age of the Ring, which add dozens of new units, new factions, gameplay mechanics and advance graphical changes.

In some missions, objectives include a <Hero> Must Survive one, even if the player base has the building which can resurrect heroes

BFMEII multiplayer / skirmish / "War of the Ring" modes have a special gameplay features involving a wandering Gollum carrying the One Ring. He drops it when dying; any unit which steps on the Ring gains it, and if it reach the player's fortress it allows him to train the ultimate hero of the Good / Evil side (Galadriel for the Good, Sauron for the Evil)

Averted in the Good campaign of BFME, in the Amon Hen mission rescuing Boromir before he is killed when protecting Merry and Pippin allows him to be used is the following missions of the campaign

Also averted with heroes/enemies with relations to each other that have modifiers to ensure things go 'as they should'. For instance, The Witch-king, for all his power, can barely damage Eowyn at all. For her part, her moves have a massive damage multiplier against him, almost one-shotting him. Other examples include the Balrog having positive modifiers against Gandalf, and vice-versa. Lumberers, the weakest unit in the game, have massive damage modifiers vs Ents, and even a unique quote for the situation; "The tree's moving?!...KILL IT!"

Giant Flyer: Both games have the Eagles for the Good side, Nazgûl riding Fell Beasts (the Witch-King is a special Nazgûl) for the Evil side. BFMEII features a dragon lord as a hero of the Goblin faction.

Giant Spider: Shelob in the Cirith Ungol mission of BFME. Goblins in BFMEII have spider-riders. They also can hire Shelob as a hero unit.

Glass Cannon: The Nazgûls on their Fell Beasts and Drogoth in the sequel. They can dish out a lot of damage, especially the latter thanks to his powerful abilities, but to compensate being a immune to melee attacks are very vulnerable to archers.

<Hero> Must Survive: Used in a few of levels, though others you could just summon your heroes back at your base if you had enough money.

Hero of Another Story: The Good campaign of second game actually is the other story to the main plot line of The Lord of the Rings, as it focuses on battles fought in the northern regions of Middle Earth just after the Fellowship left Rivendell.

Human Resources: One of the Evil factions resource producing buildings is the slaughterhouse, which produce much when feed by your own troops. More, Mordor basic infantry is literally free: one practical way to gain easy money is to build Orc infantry, just to send them to the slaughterhouse. This only applies to the first game as resource production buildings with the exception of the Evil lumber mill are split by faction, with Isengard getting the furnace, Mordor retaining the slaughterhouse, and Goblins getting tunnels and the Mordor basic infantry now cost money to build.

Hero Unit: Lots, almost any character from the movies is one, and some from the books.

Killed Off for Real: Boromir, in the BFME Evil campaign. Amusingly, the other heroes keep coming back in later Evil missions even though you killed them too.

Last Stand: The Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith missions in the BFME Good campaign are a nearly hopeless siege where the player, as the defender, must resist until The Cavalry (literally: both missions involves reinforcements from Rohan) comes. There is also the last mission of the campaign, where the player must survive against endless waves of Mordor units, until Frodo reaches Mount Doom and tosses the One Ring in it.

Helm's Deep is vulnerable to Sequence Breaking though. The enemy waves are scripted for a straight siege and completely defenseless to cavalry raids; they can be annihilated before they reach the walls with little effort if you replace your starting structure with a stable. Even if you stay behind the walls, upgrading your archers with fire arrows allows you to set off all the bombs from a safe distance if you can stay focused, allowing you to defend indefinitely.

Magic Knight: Gandalf looks like a Squishy Wizard (he only wears a grey/white robe, wields a sword and a staff) but he is an incredibly tough melee fighter with destructive magic spells, being one of the Good heroes with the most hitpoints.

Saruman is the evil counterpart.

Mass "Oh, Crap!": Whenever a particularly scary unit like a Giant Flyer shows up, all nearby non-hero enemies freak out, visibly cowering and wailing in terror. This even extends to some hero abilities, which outright paralyzes them with fear. The Cloudbreak ability has this effect on evil forces as well.

Meaningless Meaningful Words: the heroes have standard slogans they will say when they are selected. Particularly Arwen's: "Their treachery betrays them" makes no sense, but to a lesser extent also Glorfindel's "Something is a-foul" and others.

No Campaign for the Wicked: Totally averted. BFME and BFMEII both have an "Evil" campaign, and the only campaign of The Rise of the Witch-King is centered on an Evil faction.

No Canon for the Wicked: Played straight with BFME and BFMEII, averted with The Rise of the Witch-King, being a prequel telling the story of the Witch-King of Angmar.

BFMEII and its expansion being Very Loosely Based On A Famous Story, the canon-status of The Rise of the Witch-King is questionable, though.note Though Angmar's conquest of Arnor is canon in and of itself, several liberties are taken with exactly how the conflict played out.

No Cure for Evil: The healing spells and buildings are specific to the Good factions, the only healing feature allowed to the Evil factions is the heroes automatic health regeneration.

Angmar's sorcerer units in the third came have a spell that can heal their allies.

Plunder: Éomer has a skill which make the player controlling him gain money when he or allied units near him destroy enemy units and buildings. The Isengard Hero Lurtz unlocks the same power at level 6. Evil factions have a general skill which has the same effect, but for every unit of the player.

In BFMEII the Wild Men of Dunland have this ability in effect whenever attacking buildings.

One-Man Army: The Balrog, which easily wipe out whole armies or bases. Sauron is even more extreme: while he has an attack rate and movement rate so slow that he's practically taking his time with each swing, one hit from him will destroy anything a few swings at best, and he takes an absurd amount of damage before dying, and that's without using his abilities.

Plot Armor: You might think Faramir would be weaker than Boromir, being the younger brother. And Gimli weaker than his father, Glóin. But Faramir and Gimli are more important to the plot of Lord of the Rings, therefore they are higher-level heroes. Averted with Legolas and his father Thranduil; Thranduil is worth more, though Legolas is arguably more useful.

The Remnant: Near the end of the Good campaign of BFME, some optional missions set is the territory of Rohan have Isengard survivors as enemies. There is also Rohirrim enforcements to the enemy during some missions of the end of the Evil campaign.

Robo Teching: Zig-Zagged in BFMEII. Your ranged troops originally don't have Homing Boulders, but once you upgrade to Flaming Arrows (or Silverthorn arrows for the Elves), they never miss and shots can be seen to bend to strike targets. Totally explainable with the Elves-Silverthorn arrows are clearly enchanted-but for everyone else, it's clearly for balance reasons.

Campaign map of BFME is like this. Appart from some imposed missions relating key events of the films (Helm's Deep, Isengard siege, Cirith Ungol, etc), the player can choose to conquest the region he wants. This choice influences the reward gained at the ending of the mission (general power point, increasing the Arbitrary Headcount Limit, or increasing the rate of generation of money)

The "War of the Ring" mode of BFMEII have two parts: a turn-based mode on a "Risk"-Style Map, and a real time battle when the player have to fight.

Saved by Canon: The Evil campaign of BFME. Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli are met during the Amon Hen, Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith missions, where they have to be killed each time. Same thing with Faramir in the Southern Ithilien, Osgiliath, and Minas Tirith missions.

Then they show up again in the evil campaign in BFMEII in the final mission to once again throw everything they have at you. Literally: Aragorn comes with an army of the dead, Arwen tries that water summoning trick, Legolas has an Entish army, and Gandalf goes on a one-man rampage inside your base.

Siege Engines: In BFMEII, the Elves amusingly have Ents as their siege units.

Spared by the Adaptation: Boromir and Théoden can be saved, Gandalf doesn't fall in his fight against the Balrog (and becomes Gandalf the White nevertheless) and Frodo doesn't lose his finger.

Suspiciously Similar Substitute: The Goblin faction's two original heroes stand ins for characters dead by the time the game's events are set. Gorkil is obvious stand in for the Great Goblin and Bolg from the The Hobbit, and Drogoth is an obvious stand in for Smaug.

Suspiciously Small Army: This is an RTS after all, the games can't handle the number of units that would comprise a real army.

Double subverted in the BMFE II. In skirmish mode, you can allow all players to have up to 100,000 command points. But good luck getting that many units without having your computer explode. The game engine isn't designed to have that many units on the map at once. If you're lucky, you might have a few thousand — any more and you'll experience severe lag, regardless of how powerful your rig is.

Too Dumb to Live: The two horsemen who foolishly gallop into Isengard yelling at Saruman in the first evil campaign quest.

Victory Pose: The troops troops cheer after every successful minor skirmish. That is to say, if you send one squad of cavalry to run down one squad of orcs, they will stop and cheer once the orcs are dead. Every. Time. Well, at least morale is good. They will also cheer if a hero runs near them. Which makes sense for, say, Aragorn or Théoden, but not quite as much for the hobbits. Cheer Before Frodo?

Video Game Caring Potential: In the campaign of BFME, and in the "War of the Ring" mode of BFMEII, heroes and units are kept during the whole campaign. They gain experience and some of them can be upgraded.

The first half of BFME's good campaign has Eomer ride around Rohan saving peasants from Uruk-hai.note This has an actual in-game benefit: if you save the peasants from death, they will join your forces. Admittedly, they're some of the weakest units in the army, but also some of the most upgradeable.

What If?: The Evil campaign in both games can be considered this. The first game shows what would happen if the bad guys won the battles featured in the movie trilogy, while the second game tells the story of the villains slowly taking over the northern regions, ending with the remnants of the free races of Middle Earth making a last stand at Rivendell. During that final mission, Sauron even managed to retrieve the ring from Frodo.

World of Ham: You could rename this game "Middle-earth: Scenery-chewing Edition" and be completely accurate. Everyone, and we mean EVERYONE, hams it up as if it's going out of style.

You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: The Evil campaign of BFMEII has a mission when the player (commanding a Goblin army) has to conquest the Shire. When it is done, an Isengard army led by Grí­ma Wormtongue build a base there, thank the player for doing the dirty job, and turn against the player. The end of the mission consists in destroying it and killing Grima.

When Trees Attack: The Fangorn, and Isengard missions of BFME (both campaign). Ents (including the Treebeard hero unit) can also be trained as Rohan units in BFME, and as Elven units in BFMEII.

Zerg Rush: Mostly used by Mordor as they can produce orcs for free and evil factions in general tend to use this tactic since their units are much cheaper. Isengard averts this in the second game, actually relying on powerful and expensive units.

Later on in the first game, the enemy faction will do at the beginning of each battle. Since your units will still have their upgrades from previous battles, this tends be just sad.

The sieges of Helm's Deep and Minas Tirith also begin like this, as the enemy attempts to overwhelm you through sheer numbers (you'll have around several hundred units at most when the battles start, while the enemy will likely have over ten thousand).

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